No charge.

The Shadow Colonies are ET settlements that are not publicly known or acknowledged. None of Earth's governments has the capacity to monitor the entire sky. Unauthorized landings, or clandestine deals with specific governments or non-governmental groups, have led to secret ET settlements.
—Anaïs Nineveh, The Exodus: A History, Chapter 2

Mel was running the swifter over the floor to clean up a sticky white spill when he realized he wasn't wearing his shirt. With a shock, he looked down at his bare chest and legs, and swiftly tried to hide behind the skinny pole in his hands. Jordan and Jenny were behind the counter, in their work clothes, staring at him, faces placid, utterly unfazed by Mel's nudity.

"What the fuck is that?" Ha-Yoon said. He turned, aware she had been standing there. The gold-shirted manager pointed down, between his legs. Mel held the swifter's handle away from him and saw, emerging from his crotch, a long, slender tentacle-arm. It faded from the pale pink of his skin to the dark purple of the Ancient's arm. It rose and seemed to hover in front of Ha-Yoon like a cobra about to strike.

"Don't worry, I've got this," Rachel broke in. Mel and the crotch-tentacle turned as one to see the naked blonde stride forward confidently. She licked her lips, eyes locked on the smooth, rounded tip. As the tentacle lowered herself toward her mouth, those blue eyes flitted toward Mel's and winked.

"Come to momma," she whispered, a moment before the purple tip slid over her tongue. Rachel's lips peeled around her teeth, just as she did when going down with Mel, so that the teeth didn't cut his sensitive skin. Her eyes began to look into the middle distance, unfocused, the pupils slowly dilating as more and more of the tentacle slid into her mouth, out of sight. Mel stood there, still holding the swifter in his right hand as Rache sank to her knees, over a meter of tentacle inside of her.

Ha-Yoon pointed at the sticky white puddle.

"You still have to clean up that mess."

Rache pinched his toe. He sat up as Jordan and Jenny stirred. Her blonde hair was damp, and she was wearing different clothes. Coffee smells clung to her.

"I know it's early," she said. "Walk with me? Safer than being a woman alone this early."

Mel nodded, rose, dressed. A glance at the kitchen clock showed he had lost an hour of sleep, but he didn't begrudge Rache an hour. The streets were dark and cool when they hit them. Cars passed by, but the sidewalks were almost abandoned as their steps turned to Freeman's Park.

"A half-sister," Rachel said when they stepped onto the trail. "Have you thought about what you're going to say to her?"

Mel's jaw worked. "I thought I'd start by introducing myself. Not sure what I can ask about without being rude, but I guess I want to know what she knows about her birth parents."

"It's like a date, isn't it?" Rachel said. "That dance. Finding out about someone else, but needing to open up and share a piece of yourself, too. So easy to be hurt, or to poke too deep, too fast, and watch them close up—"

"I'm not trying to date her," Mel said. "I just—I mean, I kind of want to know what happened, but I guess the more important thing is if she wants a relationship. Not a romantic one, just—hell, I've never had a sister before. I don't really know how that works. Birthdays? Christmas? I mean, I don't even know if she's Christian. Christmas was just sort of default at the orphanage."

They reached the darker part. At night, with the tree branches interlocking overhead, it was blacker than night. Rachel grabbed Mel's arm with both hands and stepped carefully.

"I'm a little worried," Rache admitted. "It's stupid, I know, but I had this dream where she took you away, and I was alone in the apartment with Jordan and Jenny, sleeping on that big bed in your room between them, and their hands were roaming all over me. There was this vast, aching need right at the core of me, like that night on the bus, a gap that I wanted you to fill, this sensation of terrible emptiness as if I was hollowed out. Except you weren't there, and their fingers and mouths just . . . weren't enough."

Mel's jaw worked, the crotch of his pants suddenly tight.

"I'm not going anywhere, Rache," he promised.

As the end of the shadowed trail came into sight, he felt her lips brush his cheek.

"I want you to have a relationship with your sister. If she is your sister. Want you to have a family. I mean, I know what it was like when I thought I'd lost Jordan, I don't know how I'd feel if I learned there was a whole other sister I'd never met. I just . . . I want you to know, she doesn't have to be your only family," Rache said.

He looked at her. She had a fresh bandage on her neck, and in the dark, he could only make out her profile, so much like Jordan's. Mel wondered if Jordan and Jenny were thinking the same thing. On instinct, Mel pulled her to him in a clutch and pressed his mouth against her throat. Rachel let him. She shuddered as Mel suddenly sucked hard, not quite biting. The way he remembered Jordan doing it was when she had left the hickey on his neck. When they parted, Rachel was red-faced and looked ready for me. Yet, this was neither the time nor the place.

They broke apart in the hallway, each to their own apartment. Mel had work, Rachel had classes.

Jordan and Jenny were sitting up. The clothes for all three of them had been laid out on the couch, but neither had dressed yet.

"Exercises," he said, pulling off his shirt. "Right."

They worked through the stretches. Push-ups. Crunches. Mel counted out the sets. It wasn't about control. He wasn't sure he wanted to control anyone else. Yet they were following his lead, trusting him to guide them, set the pace, decide when they were done, and to Mel that felt reassuring after days of doubt.

After showering, as they got dressed, Mel told them about his walk with Rachel.

". . . and I just want you both to know, no matter what happens, I'm not going anywhere," he said, as he plucked the vial of sperm out of the fridge and slid it into a front pocket.

At that announcement, Jenny surprised him with a kiss on the lips. Not just a peck, but grabbing his cheeks and holding them, her tongue pushing past his teeth. Jordan's mouth fastened on his neck, a familiar pain starting as she sucked hard. Mel smiled in the kiss, keenly aware of the irony. Well, let them mark him as theirs, then. Maybe that was how they showed affection.

The beer fridge was locked when the trio arrived for work. Tomie was behind the counter; Ha-Yoon had the first aid kit and was cleaning and wrapping a cut on the Asian brain slug host's palm, the puckered lips drawn in tight, eyes bright—not glowing, just wide as they could go, and wet-looking as though on the verge of tears—as the manager competently bandaged up the long, ragged, bloody wound.

"Mel, the beer fridge is locked, keycard is on my desk," Ha-Yoon said. "Clean up. Watch the glass. Jordan, Jenny, come here and see if Tomie is okay to work or if she needs to go home or to the doctor."

The key card was next to the sobriety chip, and a glance at the trash can showed some SuperTwinkee(TM) wrappers but no cans or bottles. Mel felt a bit of relief as he grabbed the key card, then went to the closet for the swifter, a set of heavy-duty gloves, and the portable dustbin—a flat, bright pink plastic scoop on a handle for dealing with broken glass, syringes, or anything else you didn't want to pick up with your hands.

A shelf had collapsed, spilling most of a case of some local IPA onto the floor. The obvious culprit: a rusty screw that had been half-dragged out of the frame. Probably as old as the Cosmic Fill-Up itself, an accident waiting to happen. Mel offloaded the shelf, cleaned up the broken bottles, then ran the swifter over the whole beer fridge floor. By the time he was done, Tomie had gone home, and Ha-Yoon was on the phone with corporate about a workplace safety incident.

Mel was outside replacing a roll of receipt paper when Amelia rolled up in her Toyota Pulsar, Li'l Mel in a crash pod in the rear.

"Hey, you," she said, with a smile. She still looked tired, but was wearing a greyish-white Seacouver Community College hoodie over a kind of orange strap wrapped around her breasts and the back of her neck, which left her abdomen free. Post-partum, that bared a slightly saggy belly with dark stretch marks. Mel didn't think it looked bad on her, though. Like a soldier bearing their battle scars.

"Hey," he said, then, on instinct: "How have you been?"

"Trying to get a date," she said with a frown. "Single motherhood is lonely. Need adult conversation. Maybe scratch an itch. You?"

Mel opened his mouth, and without thinking, he said, "You gave birth almost three weeks ago. Aren't you still sore?"

Amelia tilted her head and gave him a look.

"There's always anal. It's not just a fourth-date thing," she said.

Mel felt like his brain was one of those school computers so old and overloaded with safety software that it had trouble loading a web page. Finally, he managed: "I might have a half-sister."

Amelia raised an eyebrow.

"Might? You don't know?" she asked.

They got her vehicle plugged in to charge. Li'l Mel was transferred from the crash pod to a sling. A coffee was ordered, poured, and sipped. She sat, baby in her lap, as Mel outlined the situation.

"Wow," she said, when he was done. "I get it, though. I've got an extra mom out there, somewhere."

"What?" Mel asked.

Li'l Mel opened his mouth to cry. Without skipping a beat, Amelia hooked a thumb through an orange strap, pulled it down to bare a breast, the dark nipple puffy and swollen, and guided the baby's face to it. Upon being presented with a boob the size of his head, Li'l Mel shut up.

"My mom," Amelia said. "Was conceived via embryo transfer. Sperm and egg from donors are combined into a fertilized embryo, implanted in a surrogate. Except she was one of several viable embryos, and she had a twin embryo, genetically identical, that stayed in the freezer. Used to be there was a problem with survival, keeping them frozen that long, but apparently, technology has improved. Wasn't implanted until after I was born, so my mom's twin is technically younger than me. Didn't learn about it until she'd been in this motorcycle accident and they needed a bone marrow donor."

"That's . . . heavy," Mel said, doing his best not to stare at the bared boob. He focused on Amelia's face, what might be the remnant of an old eyebrow piercing. "What did you do?"

"There's a medical background form you have to fill out before you can donate," Amelia shrugged. "When they saw my line of work, her parents got skittish. Thought she'd catch a disease.

"Anyway," Amelia said. "I never even got to meet her. But she's out there. Somewhere. Someone else with half my DNA. But none of my mom's memories, her history. So really, what do we have in common? Her parents didn't want a relationship, you understand. It was all transactional for them. Or maybe, extractional. Expected me to undergo a medical procedure to help their daughter and then fuck off out of their lives."

"Language," Mel said, automatically.

Amelia glanced down at Li'l Mel, a slightly guilty look on her face.

"Yeah, I need to work on that. Fortunately, he's not talking yet. Are you, my widdle boob-freak? Mommy's favorite widdle boob-sucker, yesh you are!"

Mel grinned. Baby talk was only really used around the youngest in the orphanage, the ones most likely to be adopted. Breastfeeding was not on the menu. Li'l Mel, for his part, seemed to have slipped into some zen-babyzone, eyes shut, entirely focused yet relaxed.

He realized he was staring. So was Amelia.

"No breast milk in the orphanage," she said, as if reading his thoughts. "You want to try it? No charge."

She hooked a thumb under her other strap, but to Mel's immense consternation and relief, Ha-Yoon coughed. He looked up, and she pointed towards the bathrooms, making a sweeping motion with her arms. With a nod toward Amelia, Mel got back to work—but to his relief, the manager immediately sat down to coo over the baby and keep chatting to Amelia.

As much as he missed his privacy, Mel had to admit that Amelia had it harder, doing everything by herself. Self-sufficiency had its downsides. As he sanitized the women's restroom, Mel thought about what she had said about her clonal mom, or however you might qualify it. Growing up without a family had skewed his own understanding of what family meant. He had a hazy idea of a nuclear ensemble from sitcoms and movies, though he knew in real life that ideal was increasingly unlikely to be more than a temporary bubble of stability in a life of divorces, remarriages, blended families.

He frowned at the bone marrow thing. What would I say if Mollie wanted my bone marrow? Probably yes. I don't think I'd be able to say no if anyone were really in need in that regard.

What would I want in return, though? Mel wondered. What do brothers and sisters actually do?

Siblings at the orphanage tended to hang out together, play together. Roomed together when practical. Had each other's backs during fights, a lot of the time. Mel had seen younger kids follow older siblings around like shadows, and seen those same siblings get into knock-down, drag-out fights of amazing viciousness, only to hug it out after. Mostly, they just seemed to know each other. An invisible tie of common experiences, references, and an innate understanding that they were in it together.

Mel frowned, not sure how different that was from what he felt with Rachel.

Well, I'm having sex with Rachel, Mel reminded himself. Won't be doing that with my half-sister.

The door to the women's restroom opened, even though Mel had put out the closed-for-cleaning sign. Detective MacElroy stood there, in a more nondescript white turban and ankle-length duster. Mel gave a little smile. It was a clever way to guarantee them a chance bit of privacy, though Jordan and Jenny would have seen the brain bat come in and head to the bathrooms.

"Mr. Arkwright. Any chance you've had a chance to think about what I've said?" she asked.

"Just a sec," he said. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the vial and handed it over. Only when she reached out for it did he see that the hand was covered by a pale blue latex glove.

"Excellent. The lab results usually take a week or so," the Detective said. "I'll contact you when I have a report. In the meantime, there are some others in the Community who would . . ."

Mel let her talk. He wondered if he should ask her about Mollie. No doubt the brain-bat had access to various police databases and could find out a lot about her. Except Mel didn't even have Mollie's last name, yet . . . and maybe it was a sudden spark of paranoia, but if she was interested in his DNA, Mel wasn't sure he wanted MacElroy to know about her. Not yet, anyway.

". . . a couple, if that's alright with you," MacElroy finished.

"Fine," Mel said, and finished sterilizing the last corner. He nodded at the Detective as she headed into a stall. Maybe she did have to use the restroom after all.

By the time he emerged, Amelia and Li'l Mel were gone. Mel took a deep breath.

Tonight, homework, dinner, girlfriend time. Tomorrow he was going to meet his half-sister.